25.2.15

The Paris Review transcribes a recent interview

When I was at Emerson for that year, David Foster Wallace, who was a great writer who was not known then, was my teacher—he was my English teacher … It was the first teacher I fell in love with. I’d never found anybody else like that at any of the other schools I’d been to. Which makes me really reticent to talk shit about schools or anything else, because it’s just like anyplace—if you could find a good teacher, man, I’m sure school would be great.

[...]

I called him once. He was very generous with his phone number. He said “Call me if you got any questions,” and I called him a couple times ... I ran a few ideas by him about this paper that I was writing. I was writing a paper on Don DeLillo’s White Noise … I’d come up with a couple crazy ideas, and I don’t remember the conversation well, but I just remember him being real generous at like, you know, midnight the night before it was due … I’d love to go back and read [White Noise] again. [Read More]